A Kitchen of One's Own is a brand new blog, but I am already madly in love with it. Blogger Ginny W is bringing the kick-ass. We thought STEM fields were tough places for women to make a living - and they are - but this post makes, say, your average physics department or engineering construction site look like a care bears tea party.

Women are also expected to take part in active misogyny: to refer to men and other women, and even themselves, as bitches; to deal yo mama insults; to deplore weakness, weeping, and other “girl” faults; to make and laugh at rag jokes, rape jokes, and a host of other jokes relying on the revilement of women. Not just tolerate it from the men, but actively take part in it.

The post on Disability and Restaurant Life is also highly recommended. It gives me a new perspective on this Philadelphia Inquirer story from last July about Jennifer Carroll, pastry chef at 10 Arts Bistro & Lounge. Hell, the whole damn blog, new as it is, is a real eye-opener for me in thinking about any of Philly's women chefs (and how precious few there are, given the restaurant renaissance the city has seen over the past few decades).

Zuska loves good food and good restaurants, and, of course, is a feminazi. This new blog is a delight to her hairy-legged heart.

Wow, yeah, they are a tough lot in kitchens. Worked in many restaurants myself. I'm not so sure we can say that the gung ho porn chick idea of feminism is not good enough, because that reeks a bit of academic elitism. The average kitchen chick may not be the most well educated woman in the world, but that doesn't mean she lacks the spirit of Real Feminism. Without the Fem 101 vocab, what ways do they actually have to express it? I mean, if they are surrounded by a few sexist no hoper slobs, then giving back what they do is about their only option, other than beating someone up and getting fired. I've never been tempted to do the latter in a restaurant, because it's hard work and one does end up with a grudging respect even for the lousiest creep of a coworker, if they are saving you from death by exhaustion.

I'm plotting a post at some point about STEM and the kitchen, comparing and contrasting how the two work for women. I've got some research to do first.

I'm a geek, and the daughter, sister and niece of scientists and engineers, and I gave serious thought to going into the sciences myself. A lot of my women friends are in STEM fields, and several of the blogs I read (including, of course, this one) have regular posts about the issues women face in STEM fields, or how to get more women to go into them, or more women at conferences. Those posts were one of my inspirations for starting A Kitchen of One's Own, to try to do that for professional cooking. STEM has had decades now of committed feminists working on the problem, and it shows (Living 400lbs commented on the Confidentially post about people putting up porn as her desktop wallpaper when she first started in the software industry, twenty years ago; it wouldn't be acceptable now). There's still a long way to go, of course, but there's a lot we can learn from how the STEM fields have handled the issue.

[...] via Zuska, we learn about a new feminist blog by Chef Ginny W., “A Kitchen of One’s Own.” She writes about the problem that in professional kitchens still has no name: “It isn’t just that women in professional kitchens aren’t exposed to much feminism, it’s that active feminism is actually thought of — although no one I know would phrase it this way — as weakness. Saying that something is sexist and wrong is whining, is complaining, and is therefor weak and bad and something you especially can’t do if you’re a woman, and so already have to prove that you aren’t weak. Feminism — active, educated, considered feminism, not just a vague sense that women should have the same legal rights as men — is a liability. And yet feminism is exactly what’s most likely to provide any kind of solution to the problems we face.” So how’s that hopey-changey “postfeminist” bull$h!t working out for us, again? [...]